# Limiting who can be mentioned?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/limiting-who-can-be-mentioned/286398
**Category:** Feature
**Tags:** mentions
**Created:** [November 23, 2023, 5:55am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/limiting-who-can-be-mentioned/286398 "2023-11-23T05:55:31Z")
**Posts on this page:** 13
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Jagster](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jagster)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2023, 5:55am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/limiting-who-can-be-mentioned/286398/1 "2023-11-23T05:55:31Z")
Policy of who and even when can be mentioned varies a lot depending forums. Here we see every now and then this kind of comments:
> Sorry for @ ing you earlier, I didn’t know it was poor etiquette.
Could we solve out this if we had a setting somewhere — a purpose made group perhaps — where is limited who cannot be mentioned? But that could be too limiting and there should be extra settings for who and when can use mentions — to allow staff’s and other background groups’ work.
Plus error message should be more informative than general one as _you aren’t allowed to mention that person_.
I have bad feeling this another draft in the meaning it is technically difficult to build, but again — my knowledge of dev things is below zero. If it would be easy we would have it already, right?
But situation when an user uses a tool that is there, but it shouldn`t be used, is quite strange.
(AI suggested header _When @ is Taboo: Managing Forum Mention Policies_ 😜 )
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### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2023, 1:36pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/limiting-who-can-be-mentioned/286398/2 "2023-11-23T13:36:35Z")
This was the subject of a recent #Marketplace I believe:
> [@Ability to limit certain groups from mentioning members of other groups](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-limit-certain-groups-from-mentioning-members-of-other-groups/286342):
>
> What would you like done? One of our forum instances involve participation from different groups of members, where certain groups host people who attract a lot of public attention (let’s call them celebrities) communicating with others when they want to (Q&A, discussions, and so on). We have already provided a way for them to be limited from excessive spam by prohibiting communicating with these people via PM, thanks to guys from Communiteq back in '21 ([[PAID] Group to Group permissions to send…](https://meta.discourse.org/t/paid-group-to-group-permissions-to-send-private-messages-to-target-group-members/198936)
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### Author:  [@Jagster](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jagster)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2023, 2:22pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/limiting-who-can-be-mentioned/286398/3 "2023-11-23T14:22:38Z")
Good to know, because I don’t follow Marketplace — and yet I can’t understand why it is not part of core.
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### Author:  [@kinetiksoft](https://meta.discourse.org/u/kinetiksoft)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2023, 11:57pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/limiting-who-can-be-mentioned/286398/4 "2023-11-24T23:57:45Z")
The same reason why Discourse’s core doesn’t send you a fax with your community heartbeat. As we can see, there’s no big demand for it, especially within a scope of what CDCK guys do for their clients. Luckily, it’s open source, and it is theoretically possible for such feature to appear once somebody picks up this task no matter the conditions for it are set. So, you could join us at this marketplace request and we could increase the budget in order to find potential developer quicker. So far no responses to that marketplace request.
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### Author:  [@Jagster](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jagster)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2023, 7:42am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/limiting-who-can-be-mentioned/286398/5 "2023-11-25T07:42:37Z")
> [@kinetiksoft](#):
>
> why Discourse’s core doesn’t send you a fax with your community heartbeat
That is one of the lousiest reasonings and you know it too 😏
Not because of an example of as ancient tool as landlines or checks (I can’t even write it, piece of paper that acts as cash money) but because Discourse is just piece of code. We are talking here about tools to limit actions. Just like we can limit when and where is suitable to Discourse popup to screen or start beeping on my wrist.
I understand totally why there is need to limit informatic flow. But it should be happend via settings and automation using a little bit more civil way than nagging when users are using offered tools that are widely in use.
No. I have zero intress discuss about policy of Meta. I was used this forum as an example why there is need and demand for such option.
Your solution is pay to get option to limit in-build action. I would like to see softwear itself offering an option to adjust its own behaviour. Just as we can do with everything else.
If it is impossible mission because of technical structure of Discourse, including amount of workload and then human nagging is cheaper option, then I’m happy — but I would like to hear it. Or… if no one else thinks we should have, at age of AI, something more reliable tools than just human moderation and longer rulebook, then this feature request never fullfils rule of three or even needs of corporate clients and that’s fine too.
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### Author:  [@Stephen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Stephen)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2023, 10:41am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/limiting-who-can-be-mentioned/286398/6 "2023-11-25T10:41:51Z")
The thing about etiquette is that to some extent it’s all about context.
It’s not appropriate for someone to demand the involvement of a specific person in a support topic, but entirely appropriate to mention them in other contexts such as citing their involvement elsewhere or giving thanks. Even if you could figure out the logic to manifest that behavior in code, users wouldn’t necessarily understand.
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### Author:  [@Jagster](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jagster)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2023, 11:04am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/limiting-who-can-be-mentioned/286398/7 "2023-11-25T11:04:32Z")
> [@Stephen](#):
>
> users wouldn’t necessarily understand
Exacly. And that’s why we/them/everybody needs one setting more.
Sure, if the real reason not to limit ability of mentions is it will break too easy background jobs (again, as an example) like messaging of team or what ever works there, that is understable.
I’ve worked on live support and sales. I didn’t do very much global markets but scandinavians. But britons have real strong tendency contact right away to superviser if theirs demands didn’t fullfilled. That’s why email addresses and phonenumbers were’t available at all for customers. We didn’t rely on asking customers not to bother them because they had some other jobs to do too.
Same apply with limiting mentions. Different environment, but totally same principle.
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### Author:  [@kinetiksoft](https://meta.discourse.org/u/kinetiksoft)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2023, 11:50am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/limiting-who-can-be-mentioned/286398/8 "2023-11-25T11:50:13Z")
We face the same problems, but as it’s not polite to mention higher-ups in the Discourse structure (and I’m not sure who to tag to bring this request to their attention), we can only hope they stumble upon an interesting feature request, or that it will be addressed by Meta-Discourse enthusiasts via any internal channels they may share.
At the same time, we as a community using this wonderful product, could help improve its critical functionality by funding outsource development. Marketplace requests could even have a great feature for crowd-funding - which gives us another productive idea to implement. 🙂
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### Author:  [@Jagster](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jagster)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2023, 2:35pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/limiting-who-can-be-mentioned/286398/9 "2023-11-25T14:35:41Z")
This topic is basically same as this:
> [@Restrict who you can PM based on Groups](https://meta.discourse.org/t/restrict-who-you-can-pm-based-on-groups/74531):
>
> Hi Discourse Community! We’re using groups and categories to restrict what users can see/which forums they can participate in. This is mostly for privacy reasons/so that people aren’t inundated with topics that do not apply to them. However, we’ve noticed that when you @mention people, or when you private message them, you can actually tag (or reach out to) any user on the platform. With the @mention, you get a warning saying that you’re mentioning someone who doesn’t have access, which is sup…
> **a solution to limit PM, not for mentions per se**
>
> [Discourse Restrict PMs to certain Groups](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-restrict-pms-to-certain-groups/286584)
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### Author:  [@JammyDodger](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JammyDodger)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2023, 3:30pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/limiting-who-can-be-mentioned/286398/10 "2023-11-25T15:30:33Z")
I’m not sure that plugin will be that helpful for @mentions? I think it’s only for PMs.
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### Author:  [@Firepup650](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Firepup650)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2023, 3:32pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/limiting-who-can-be-mentioned/286398/11 "2023-11-25T15:32:56Z")
Seems like it’s dual purpose:
> [@Discourse Restrict PMs to certain Groups](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-restrict-pms-to-certain-groups/286584/1):
>
> Restrict public from mentioning certain groups members.
Edit: This is only mentioned in the info block at the top of the post, and nowhere else, I’m not sure if this is actually part of that plugin or not.
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### Author:  [@Jagster](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jagster)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2023, 3:35pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/limiting-who-can-be-mentioned/286398/12 "2023-11-25T15:35:34Z")
My excuse is I came home from 5k running, out there is -10˚C /14˚F, I was sweaty and anxiously waiting for sauna.
And now I’ll read what I linked in the first place…
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### Author:  [@kinetiksoft](https://meta.discourse.org/u/kinetiksoft)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2023, 7:46pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/limiting-who-can-be-mentioned/286398/13 "2023-11-25T19:46:22Z")
> [@Firepup650](#):
>
> Edit: This is only mentioned in the info block at the top of the post, and nowhere else, I’m not sure if this is actually part of that plugin or not.
Sorry for misleading summary, I made a mistake there. The plugin we sponsored limits PMs only and does not affect mentionables.